


From The Nape Of Her Neck He Made His Descent

by i_want_you_to_make_me (moosecrofts)



Category: Interstellar (2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 20:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2594618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moosecrofts/pseuds/i_want_you_to_make_me
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe the thrill of it is that he doesn’t love her and she doesn’t love him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From The Nape Of Her Neck He Made His Descent

**Author's Note:**

> Major spoiler! If you haven't seen Interstellar than get in your car and go see it like literally right now. I also wrote this in one sitting and barely skimmed it for editing so also be warned there.

He rushes at her like a newborn puppy. He’s yelling loudly and tripping over the cushion of his boots but even from on top of the hill he can see the half-moon curve of her smile.

He hugs her until he can remember how to breathe.

“I was almost hoping I’d never see that face again.” she says bitingly, but there's something in her voice that is wet and a little raw and the thought of kissing her crosses his mind for the first time right there in the middle of their new home.

 

~

 

Before anyone else arrives, she holds a funeral. She holds it for Edmund and for Doyle and for Romilly. They don’t say anything in their name but they stand there in silence, connected by their grief. He thinks, wildly, about adding a grave for Murph before he realizes that his legs have given out. He apologizes over and over to the dirt until Brand settles her small hands firmly on his shoulder.

 

~

 

Maybe the thrill of it is that he doesn’t love her and she doesn’t love him. Talking to others almost feels useless because they can’t possibly bridge the gap that the black hole and Mann and all those stars has burrowed for him. They talk about his and Murph’s achievements and ask him about space but it ends up sounding like someone tapping on reinforced glass.

She shows up at his apartment one night in a dress that makes her look impossibly small and makeup expertly done.

“I can’t do this anymore.” she tells him, charging through this doorway. He doesn’t mention that it’s two in the morning and she doesn’t either.

“Party?” he asks instead, even though he knows that it is because he had burned the invitation earlier. Brand looks up at him from where she’s slipping out of her high heels.

She curls her toes in on the wood floor and nods. She doesn’t meet his gaze.

He doesn’t say anything but she flinches as he approaches. He stops, stuck between wanting to rush forward and calm her and wanting to respect her personal space.

He whispers, his voice gentle, “Why?”

She stares up at him for a beat, her eyes unfocusing. She kneads her hands once before she answers, “My father… I… I owe them for what he did and for what I was negligent for and… I see all these people and I know every one of them would have died if my father had been right, if I had been right.”

Something blistering and cruel bubbles up in him. Hes hated her for this, let it fester inside him. She’s right, and it’s nasty and ugly but he wants to laugh at her. She sees it on his face.

“I shouldn’t have come.” she says plainly, and her voice doesn’t shake at all. He loves when she’s angry because she stands up straight and tall and her mouth becomes a nearly perfect straight line. Her confidence doesn’t waver when she’s like this.

He catches her elbow as she turns.

His body sparks because he doesn’t love her. Because he could only love his wife and because she is too logical to ever want to let him love her as recklessly as he could. She loved Edmund because loving him was the only uncontrollable thing she could tolerate. She was smart. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice and he knew it.

When he kisses her, he doesn’t taste galaxies. He tastes the wine and her toothpaste and expensive cheese. He doesn’t see stars or fireworks. He kisses her like he does anyways, because it’s what they both want.

He doesn’t love her and he doesn’t want to. But in this new world where he feels like he’s set adrift, she anchors him. They orbit each other because everything else is too distant.

He pushes her up against the door, licking his way into her mouth, and let’s her undress him. He takes off that ridiculous dress that made her whole body look like one straight line and makes sure to smudge her makeup because he knows she hates it, because it’s what will really make her feel good.

She’s gone when he wakes up the next morning.

 

~

 

They don’t talk about it. Some nights she’ll come over and pull him in with the inevitability of a black hole. More often than not, he’ll come home and find her in his shirt, curled up on the couch.

Sometimes she’ll feign sleep so she doesn’t have to talk, other times she’ll actually be asleep, and incredibly rare are the times where she jumps off the couch and starts to yell. Sometimes it’s about traffic or some new law or a bad party or an interview, but sometimes, she’ll yell about Mann and her father and Edmund and Doyle and she’ll cry harder than he’s ever seen her cry.

“It’s okay, it’s not your fault.” he’ll whisper in her hair, because she hates herself for what happened to Doyle. She hates herself for her lying father and for abandoning Cooper and for caring at all.

She’ll yell at him for Edmund too. “We could have saved Romilly if you had just listened to me! We would have found this planet sooner if you had just-”

And he screams back because he’s good at that, because she knows that sometimes he needs to scream too.

She’ll storm out when they’re both spent but she always comes back and kisses him so gently that he think he might break.

She knows him better than his wife did. Brand knows what buttons to push in him and when. He can’t visit the stars anymore, not like he wants to, but she’s as close as he’s ever come to being alright with that.

 

~

 

They’re sitting on the window seat, with her leg dangling over the side and a mug of tea in her hands. Neither of them can sleep.

“You were the one to hold my hand.” Brand says suddenly.

He nods because he’s not sure what else to do.

“Why?”

He looks up into the beautiful, all-consuming night sky and he knows the answer. “You had to believe in love. You had to believe that someone out there cared.”

“Love?” she asks, quietly, before sipping her tea.

He smooths his hands over her thin fingers but doesn’t reply. This seems to satisfy her because she turns away.

Long after they’re silent, he is still staring at her. He looks at her thin, pink lips and her sharp eyes and the cut of her jaw and realizes that he yearns for her like he yearns to see every galaxy in the sky. He looks at her and knows that her warmth and her presence is better than all that the stars have whispered to him.

 


End file.
